Fun and Games
by HazelinaAmberfire
Summary: Byakuran decides that merely destroying the Vongola lacked entertainment value. Instead, he decides to play a fatal game with them and get rid of them one by one as they lose the game. In this game of life and death, who will emerge victorious?
1. The Transportation

_A marshmallow._

_Pure sweetness with not the slightest trace of bitterness._

_So soft, yet so tough._

_Crushes when pressure is applied, yet springs back up again after._

_When thrown into flames, it toughens; strengthens._

_After which…_

…_it breaks down._

_And Byakuran wasn't one to allow the marshmallow to toughen up and possibly harm his delicate teeth, no. He would ensure that every molecule of the marshmallow had been burnt to oblivion before moving on to the next one…_

"Byakuran-sama, our preparations are complete. We are ready for your next command, sir."

_Excellent._

~*~

"Gokudera-ku—"

CH-BOOM.

"Why you, stupid little cow! Just you wait 'til I get my hands on you!"

"Gyahaha!" You'll never catch Lambo-san!"

"Hahaha, are you guys playing a catching game? Count me in!"

"No, Yamamo—"

"I'm gonna win the game to the EXTREME!!"

"Noisy herbivores. I'm going to bite you all to death."

"HIIIIIIIIIIIII!! Hibari-sa—"

Tsuna tried in vain to bring order to the Vongola base while simultaneously attempting to flee from Hibari. Gokudera, too focused on his tiny black and white target to even notice that his beloved boss' life was in grave danger, ran with all his might to catch hold of an annoying Lambo, with Yamamoto and Ryohei following right behind him. Meanwhile, Chrome was merely sitting at the sidelines watching the war unfold before her as though it was the most normal thing in the world.

After running three rounds around the internal perimeter of the Vongola base and successfully evading every bomb thrown at him, aimed to, at the very least, _fatally _injure him, Lambo tripped over his feet and landed face-first on the ground.

"To-le-rate—" sobbed the bovine, attempting to sniff in the snot plastered all over his tear-stained face.

"I got you now!" yelled Gokudera, materialising a handful of bombs and throwing it at the cow-print suit-wearing kid. Seconds later, the bombs exploded, sending the 5-year-old flying in the air.

THUD.

Despite having an afro making up at least three quarters of his head, Lambo somehow managed to land on the remaining quarter, which was his face. As he smacked painfully onto the concrete floor, a purple cannon-like object flew out of his afro, along with a couple of grenades and hairy candy.

The grenades exploded all around the Vongola base, narrowly missing all the guardians. Smoke filled the entire room, preventing all seven from noticing the single rogue ammunition from the ten-year bazooka flying straight towards the centre of the room.

KA-POOF.

Pink smoke filled the room for a split second before it disappeared. Still unaware of the unusually rapid clearance of the smoke from having his eyes tightly shut, Tsuna continued swiping at the air until he felt a sudden rise in temperature. Slowly opening his eyes, Tsuna gasped as he found himself in a setting starkly different from the spacious grey room he was in mere seconds ago.

A barren wasteland met his gaze; scrawny trees and shrivelled bushes protruded out of cracks in the ground, which were the result of a severe lack of water. Mountains, equally barren, could be seen in the distance, though slightly disfigured by the heat that had already caused the young Vongola to perspire profusely.

Tsuna had initially hypothesized that he had been hit by the ten-year bazooka and had been brought ten years into the future. It was a rather decent hypothesis, with only one flaw.

All seven guardians had been simultaneously transported.

* * *

**I haven't gotten down to writing the subsequent chapters yet, so if anyone has any pairing they'd like to see, feel free to suggest one and I'll try to add them in AS LONG AS IT'S NOT SOMETHING CRACK (e.g. Lussuria and the 9th boss/ Xanxus' Mother and Leornado Lippi).**

**Thanks for reading!**


	2. The Decision

All seven guardians were positioned exactly as they had been at the Vongola base before they were transported over to wherever they were now.

Hibari was close enough to Tsuna to breathe down his neck, tonfas held a hair's breadth away from Tsuna's neck. Gokudera was still looming over Lambo's head with a mountain of dynamite held in his arms, while Yamamoto and Ryohei were standing around him, seconds ago probably watching in fascination the public display of brutality which very much resembled animal abuse. Chrome was still seated a fair distance away from the rest of the guardians, not wanting to get involved in the mostly one-sided conflict.

The seven guardians surveyed their surroundings in silence, trying in vain to identify anything, besides the other guardians, that seemed the least bit familiar to them. After a couple of minutes, the first to speak was Gokudera.

"You stupid cow! Look what your bazooka did to us! You'd better bring us all back or I'll shove all these bombs up your stupid ass!"

Gokudera was about to ignite the mountain of bombs and bury the little cow in it when Tsuna spoke up for Lambo.

"Gokudera-kun… It's not really Lambo's fault that this happened…"

"But Tenth—" began Gokudera, somewhat pleading for the permission to send at least one bomb to blow the kid up, even if Tsuna didn't think Lambo was at fault, just for the satisfaction of blowing him up. Although, not wanting to defy his boss, he eventually dropped the idea. "Fine, you get away with it this time, shitty bovine," muttered Gokudera with a slight tone of resentment towards the cow.

Reluctantly stashing his bombs back into the various places he had pulled them out of, Gokudera felt a tinge of regret that he couldn't have blown the cow into pieces before his boss defended the annoying cow. He walked away from the smug-looking Lambo, once in a while pulling out an ignited bomb, extremely tempted to 'accidentally' drop it where the annoying cow was lying and 'unintentionally' blow him up.

Yamamoto walked around the area, looking into the distance where he could make out nothing but more barren land.

"Where exactly is this place?" pondered Yamamoto out loud, his question being more of rhetorical than anything… which made him even more shocked when a reply boomed out of the sky.

"_This is a piece of land that I discovered just recently. I took the liberty of decorating it a little bit for you, Vongola guardians. Impressive, isn't it?"_

The seven guardians looked into the sky, all facing different directions, yet still unable to find the source of the familiar voice.

"Byakuran… what are you up to this time?" demanded Tsuna, eyebrows furrowed and fists clenched into tight balls.

"_Oh, nothing much really. It's just that all that fighting business was getting rather dull, so I thought we could play a game to make things a little more interesting~"_

"Make me play some stupid game and I'll bite you to death," growled the Namimori prefect as he looked into the sky with a look of disgust.

"Yeah, we don't have time for stupid games—" agreed Gokudera, but his sentence was cut off prematurely as the loud voice boomed from above in reply to the statements.

"_Ah, not to worry, these games of mine are far from stupid and are exceptionally entertaining~ I'm sure you will enjoy completing them as much as I will watching you complete them~"_

"What do you take us for, toys?" retorted Gokudera. "Forget it, I'm not playing."

"_I thought you might say that. It really is up to you whether you want to participate in these games. But if you intend to leave this place, I'm afraid there is only one way out, and that is to complete this course. Think of it as a maze, if you must. There is only one entrance, and one exit. So what shall be your final decision, Vongola's Tenth Boss?"_

Tsuna stared into the sky, not bothering to conceal the look of frustration on his face. The only way to get out was to complete the set of games Byakuran had prepared for them. The decision he had to make was obvious. They had to play.

"Where's the catch? It's not as easy as just playing normal games, is it?" asked Tsuna.

"_Ever the cautious one, aren't you, Vongola? There isn't a catch. All you have to do is to complete the course of games. It really is that simple~"_

"Then let's do this TO THE EXTREME!!" screamed Ryohei from behind, clearly not doubting anything that Byakuran was saying, which was quite unlike the sceptical Gokudera.

"And the rules? They must've been rigged to make the games impossible to complete…"

"_I assure you, the rules are quite reasonable. You will get to know of the rules of each game when you arrive at the individual game locations."_

"Game locations?" queried Tsuna, suspicion evident in his voice.

"_There will be seven stages to this game, each stage being held in a setting which is suitable for the game to be_ _played. All that is required of you to begin the game is to step into the entrance of the location. Your first game entrance is the entrance to the cave that is right behind you."_

The seven guardians spun around, shocked to see an opening in the large rock they were previously so sure was just a smooth rock without so much as an indent, let alone an opening.

"_Whenever you are ready, you may begin~"_

Tsuna bit his lip and thought for a moment. And then he gave an affirmative reply.

"Alright, let's do it."

* * *

**I'm sorry I can't squeeze in any pairings as of yet, the flow of the story doesn't allow me to just yet... but I'll try to sqeeze them into the next and subsequent chapters.**

**Just a reminder: Keep suggesting, the more the pairing is suggested, the more I'll try to squeeze it in...**

**...AS LONG AS IT'S NOT CRACK.**

**...which is to say, no Glo Xinia X Belphegor and definitely no Iris X Yamamoto's Dad**

**(Hint hint: preferably anyone X Tsuna & anyone X Gokudera)**

**Thanks for reading!  
**


	3. 1st Stage: Spot the difference

The Vongola guardians stepped into the cave, Tsuna entering first, followed by his self-proclaimed right hand man and the rest. The cave grew darker as they travelled deeper into the cave and soon even what little light they had coming in from their only light source, which was the sunlight streaming in from the entrance of the cave, disappeared entirely. A thick darkness encompassed the guardians, so much so that they had to resort to leaning against the walls to prevent themselves from crashing into them.

After what seemed like decades of walking in the darkness, Tsuna rammed into a wall in front of him.

"O-ow… that hurts…"

"Tenth! Are you alright?" called out Gokudera in the direction from which he thought Tsuna's voice was coming from.

"Yeah… there's just this wall here…"

"A dead end?" asked Yamamoto, stretching his hands forward and feeling his way to the front. "Oh, there really is a wall here… perhaps we took a wrong turn?"

"HIIIIIII—!!! No way!"

"Then we're doomed TO THE EXTREME!!"

"You noisy herbivores piss me off. Do you want me to bite you all to death?"

"YIIIIIIII—!! Hibari-san… No—"

Suddenly, a bright purple light shined from where Hibari's voice was coming from. Hibari's cloud ring was emitting a strong purple flame, dispelling the darkness.

"Wow… He used the flames on his Vongola ring to brighten up the place!" exclaimed Yamamoto, impressed. "Why didn't I think of that?"

"You're a baseball idiot, idiot. You're not _supposed_ to be able to think that far," replied Gokudera, trying to make the sarcasm in his statement as evident as he possibly could.

"Hahaha, that's true…" replied Yamamoto, smiling as though Gokudera had not just insulted him.

"There's a door here…"

The guardians turned to face Chrome, who was pointing at the 'wall' that was previously preventing them from moving forward. There was a miniature door, only slightly taller than the 5-year-old Lambo, but wider than the shoulders of a fully grown man.

"Is this some kind of joke? The door's so tiny!" exclaimed Gokudera, pulling an incredulous face. "How're we supposed to go in?"

"Gyahaha! Lambo-san can fit right through the door!" mocked Lambo in a sing-song voice, strutting to the door and standing right beside it.

"Hahaha, the rest of us can crawl through it, I guess…"

"Are you kidding me? There's no way I'm crawling through tha—"

"I guess we have to crawl through then…"

"Good idea, Tenth! Allow me to go first!"

Gokudera got down on his knees and turned the miniature knob. It opened with a click and as he pushed the door open, he gasped.

The hand which he used to open the tiny door had disappeared. His arm up to his elbow was nowhere to be seen, and his arm resembled one that had been chopped clean in two.

Gokudera quickly withdrew his arm to examine where the other half of it had gone, and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that his arm and hand had reappeared.

"There's some kind of liquid veil that's covering the entrance, Tenth… It might be dangerous to go through it… but if you want me to, I'll go through it first and check that it is safe…" volunteered the faithful right hand man.

"I think…"

"Don't worry Tenth! I'll just stick my head in and see what's beyond that veil!"

"Ah, Gokudera, wait…"

Before the brunette could say anything, Gokudera's head disappeared into the door.

Seconds later, it fell back out with the rest of his body.

"Gokudera-kun! What happened? Are you okay?"

Gokudera appeared somewhat traumatised when he replied Tsuna, stammering and mumbling to himself.

"S-so many… there were so many…"

"So many what…?" asked Tsuna, uncertain if he really wanted to hear an answer.

"So many…"

Tsuna gulped. "So many… what…?"

"So many… stupid cows…"

"Ha?" came a synchronized reply from behind.

"There were hundreds of them… hundreds of annoying cows… so scary…"

"Hundreds of Lambos? Hahaha, that sounds interesting! Let me see!" exclaimed Yamamoto, shoving himself into the tiny door.

"No, Yama—"

And within a split second, he disappeared.

"That baseball idiot!"

"We'd better go after him…" muttered Tsuna, getting down onto his knees and crawling towards the door.

"There is no way I'm crawling through that," stated Hibari flatly.

"But, Hibari-sa— wagh!"

Before Tsuna could even try to start convincing Hibari to crawl through the miniature door, Hibari had already darted towards the wall and bashed a hole through it with his weapon, which was fortified with his flame.

As the walls crumbled, the scene that unfolded before them was enough to make their jaws drop.

As Gokudera had warned them earlier, an entire platoon of Lambo copies were clustered together, all swarming towards the centre of the wide room. And in the middle of the swarm came a weak groan.

"H-help…"

"Baseball idiot!" yelled Gokudera as he recognised the always-unusually-cheerful voice coming from under the battalion of Lambos. Without a second thought, Gokudera ran towards the overflowing Lambo mountain and started digging away at it.

The mountain of scrambling Lambos took on a different shape as all the Lambos that had been thrown aside climbed back on from the other side, somewhat increasing the size of the mountain. Gokudera realised that the mountain was anything but decreasing in size.

So he stood back and decided that he'd do what he had always wanted to do.

A hundred times the stupid cow, a hundred times the KA-BOOM.

He aimed his own mountain of bombs at all the areas he knew Yamamoto's voice was not coming from. As the bombs landed, smorgasbords of cows were displaced to the corners of the room, revealing a slightly-exasperated-yet-still-smiling Yamamoto.

"Thanks, Gokudera!"

"Whatever… the Tenth wanted me to help you out of there, so yeah…" lied Gokudera, sheepishly turning away from the taller boy to hide his blushing face.

"Hahaha, really? Thanks anyway…" replied Yamamoto with a grateful smile plastered over his face. "Why are there so many Lambos anyway?"

"_I thought you would never ask~"_

An eerily enthusiastic voice boomed from the furthest end of the room as a screen on the wall flickered on, displaying a very cheerful Byakuran sucking on a desert spoon.

"_They are my clones, specially made for your first game."_

"Your clones?" repeated Tsuna, still recovering from the shock of having a voice blast out of nowhere and echo throughout the entire room.

"_I created them just for this purpose. You see, your first game is a simple game of spot the difference. All you have to do is to find your comrade. Simple, is it not?"_

"Find the stupid cow? What's there to find? He's right here with—" began Gokudera, until he realised that the little cow was nowhere near the other guardians. "That dumb, stupid, idiotic cow! Where did he run off to this time?"

"_Not to worry, he should still be in this room. All you need to do is to identify him, and you pass this round."_

"And if we— for very obvious reasons— can't?" asked Gokudera in his most sarcastic voice, trying to emphasize on the impossibility of the task.

"_Then I'm afraid you will just have to lose a guardian."_

"We have to leave the stupid cow behind? No way! I mean, not that it's _that_ bad a thing to leave that annoying thing behind… but still…" muttered the Italian teen, trying to convince himself more than Byakuran that he wanted the bovine to stay.

"_It is not the child who will be left out," _corrected Byakuran. _"It is the girl."_

"Girl…?"

All eyes darted around the room in search for the Vongola illusionist, who was the only girl on the team, but she was nowhere to be seen.

"When did she…" muttered Gokudera in disbelief.

"_When you guardians walked through the wall, there was an invisible and intangible veil that was created to filter out one guardian to bring to my office. __This was done in anticipation that some of you would not want to cross over through the veil of the door made for you to pass through, which would have let all of you through without the loss of a guardian," explained Byakuran. "No matter, I have gained myself a Vongola Mist guardian. How nice~"_

"What did you do to her?!" demanded Tsuna.

"_Nothing. See for yourself," _said Byakuran, moving away from the camera to reveal a girl slumped over the floor in a prison cell._ "I assure you, she is perfectly fine. She is merely in deep slumber, which she will awaken from once you have accomplished your task."_

Tsuna breathed a sigh of relief, which was cut short by Byakuran's next statement.

"_Of course, if you fail to correctly identify the lightning guardian, her safety will be jeopardized. But that shouldn't be a problem for you guardians since you will probably be able to find your friend. I believe you have already forged a rather close bond with each other, right? So this should be a piece of cake for you. You can start whenever you like."_

"How are we supposed to find Lambo like this? All the Lambos look the same!" cried a very flustered Tsuna. "It's not possible!"

"_Ah, yes. I almost forgot. You have 30 minutes from the time you stepped into the room to find him, which means that you are left with 17 minutes and 37 seconds from now."_

"WHAT?!"

"_Yes, yes~ If I were you, I'd start looking now. But if you are that confident of finding him quickly, I have no qualms about you waiting until the last minute—"_

"How the fuck do you expect us to find him in less than 20 minutes?!"

"_I wonder…"_

With one last smile, the screen flickered off and the face of Byakuran vanished.

And in place of his face was now a countdown timer, displaying the numbers 17:04.

"That bastard! What are we supposed to do now?!"

"Find the cow TO THE EXTREME!!"

"HIIIIIIIII!! But there are so many of them… and they all look the same!!"

"Hahaha, this might be hard… but it sure sounds fun!" chirped Yamamoto, running towards the centre of the room where about fifty odd Lambos hopped onto him, burying him alive.

"When we run towards them, they attack us!" yelled Tsuna, exasperated.

"Maybe that's the only difference between the clones and the stupid cow… the clones are _more_ irritating…" commented Gokudera while blowing up chunks of afro-clad 5-year-olds and releasing Yamamoto from his monochromatic prison.

"Thanks, Gokudera…"

"Yeah, yeah…"

Five minutes passed with Tsuna calling out Lambo's name, to which twenty to thirty cows responded by jumping onto him and flattening him to the ground. Yamamoto hardly got the chance to do anything before another fifty odd Lambos tackled him down and rendered him useless in the search. Gokudera barely had time to notice any difference between any two Lambos, let alone between the hundreds and the real one, before having to blast them away from his boss, Yamamoto, Ryohei and himself. Hibari appeared to be a natural Lambo repellent; not a single Lambo came within the five-metre radius from where he was standing.

The situation appeared hopeless; no one was any closer to finding the real Lambo, and they only had ten minutes left.

Gokudera lost his patience and was about to summon his box cannon when he heard his name being called.

"Hey Gokudera…"

Yamamoto waited for the grunt which indicated that Gokudera had acknowledged that Yamamoto was talking to him before going on. "Didn't you do something to Lambo's horn the other time? Like, write on it with a marker or something?"

"What are you talking about…" was Gokudera's reply until he realised that Yamamoto was right.

He had written 'stupid cow' on Lambo's horns before Lambo's battle with Leviathan.

Picking up a random Lambo copy, Gokudera studied the horns and realised that the horns had no words written on them.

"Look for the Lambo with the words 'stupid cow' written on the horns!" commanded Gokudera. "That's the real one!"

The rest of the guardians, except Hibari, obeyed and started inspecting all the horns of all the Lambos present in the room.

"It's no use! There're too many of them!"

Tsuna was already starting to toss the Lambos aside after each inspection when he had made it a point earlier to carefully place them down onto the floor so as not to harm any of them.

_No good. We only have three minutes left._

Yamamoto was still searching patiently, re-inspecting the same Lambo at least five times, thinking it was a different cow.

_Two minutes._

Gokudera started panicking and Tsuna had already started freaking out much earlier. Identifying which Lambos they had already checked was as hard a task as finding the real Lambo.

_One minute._

Nothing. No progress. And they were down to one minute.

_Thirty seconds._

Tsuna started tearing and perspiration drenched Gokudera's face.

_Twenty seconds._

Still no Lambo.

_Ten seconds._

"Can't find it to the EXTREME!!"

_Nine._

"Not this one… not that one…"

_Eight._

"It's no use…"

_Seven._

"HIIIIIIII—!!"

_Six._

"Argh!"

_Five._

"Please…"

_Four._

"No…"

_Three._

"Shit."

_Two._

"Oh my god."

_One._

Screen flickered on.

Zero.

"Time's up."

It was over. Byakuran had won.

_

* * *

_

**Before I say anything, I'd like to thank you all for patiently reading through this fanfiction of mine and giving me great reviews that keep me going! =D**

**Anyway, I was just reading through the list of All Characters (A/B), and the names that made it onto the list simply _amuse_ me, to say the least.**

**Sure Tsuna, Gokudera and all the rest of the guardians are rightfully placed in that list. No complains there.**

**But take a look at Enzo. I mean, (no offence to Enzo fans, but _really_) who writes about Enzo? And an even better question, who IS Enzo?**

**And Hibird.**

**Not that I have anything against Hibird, mind you. I love Hibird.**

**But who pairs Hibird up with a human? And if Hibird is even selected as either Character (A) or (B), shouldn't the Rated M selection be, like, unselectable?**

**Which brings me to my next point... pairings.**

**The pairings some people include in their fanfictions never fail to astound me. It's like they dig out all the most unpopular/unknown characters whose very existence AMAZES US ALL and draws lots to see who to haphazardly matchmake.**

**For example, take a look at Nurse Lady X Kusakabe Tetsuya.**

**Sure, nobody writes about them, or even if they do, it's not like I can find them because nurse lady's not even on the list, like it should be. But such inconceivable pairings do appear in certain fanfictions, and it leaves me dumbfounded.**

**Or how about YamaNAKA Takeshi (No, it's not a typo error, he ACTUALLY exists) X GIANNINI?**

**For those who know YamaNAKA Takeshi to start with, who's the Uke and who's the Seme? The very thought of Giannini being in a Rated M section is unthinkable, so I'm not even going to TRY to come up with a theory on why Giannini should never be a Seme, but always an Uke instead, or vice versa for that matter.**

**Anyway, I'm pretty much done with my rant here, and boy do I LOVE being a writer just because we are entitled these little sections above/below the 'horizontal ruler' to talk about anything we feel like talking about. I feel so privileged. *sniffs***

**Thanks for reading!  
**


	4. 2nd Stage: Pass the message

There was simply no way.

The first stage; probably the easiest, most doable stage in the entire game…

…and they had failed it.

To make things worse, their Mist guardian was now in danger.

And there was nothing they could do about it.

Palms sweaty and hands trembling, Tsuna collapsed onto the floor, looking up with dread at the sadistic smile on their enemy's face.

"_Great attempt, guardians, great attempt~ I applaud your efforts, truly I do."_

This was it.

They had lost the game.

They had lost Chrome.

They had lost to Byakuran.

Shutting his eyes tightly and facing the ground, Tsuna waited to hear the statement he was so dreading to hear; it was one thing to know that they had lost and another to have their worst enemy rub it in their faces.

"_Guardians, guardians, guardians. You put up a marvellous show~ marvellous indeed… However…"_

There it was.

"…_perhaps you should have announced it out loud when you found your little friend, cloud guardian? I believe you gave your friends quite a bit of a scare."_

_Found…?_

All eyes turned to the figure standing at the furthest corner of the room.

He had been the most indifferent, passive guardian throughout the entire game; the one who couldn't have cared less whether or not the Lightning guardian was found. And in his hand was a sniffling, trembling Lambo, limp body dangling from where Hibari was holding him up.

On his horns were the words, 'stupid cow'.

Hibari had found Lambo. The real Lambo.

"Hibari-san did it... he found Lambo… we didn't lose…" thought Tsuna aloud, the look of relief evident on his face.

"Hibari, nice work there!" yelled Yamamoto, giving the Cloud guardian a thumbs up, to which the response was a simple 'don't try to act all friendly with me or I'll bite you to death' stare.

"We won TO THE EXTREME!" roared Ryohei, punching at the air to release his excitement. Gokudera was merely grinning to himself, elated that they had, in a sense, kicked Byakuran's ass.

All the guardians were rejoicing over their victory when the voice boomed out once again.

"_My heartfelt congratulations to all of you, well done~" _sang Byakuran. _"Since you are the winners of this round, I will return you your Mist guardian when you step into your next game location. Move along now~ simply proceed through the door under my screen."_

The guardians felt a tremor as they saw a door materialise on the white wall below the screen just as Byakuran had said.

"_Whenever you're ready."_

Looking suspiciously at the door, Tsuna hesitated for a moment before giving his command.

"Alright, let's go."

Tsuna pushed open the door and saw the veil that he had to pass through. Taking one last glance at the rest of the Vongola guardians, Tsuna stepped through the veil and crossed over to their new destination.

As he entered the second game location, Tsuna found himself enclosed in an empty cubicle barely large enough to fit one person. White walls were all he could see at a glance, but upon closer inspection, Tsuna could make out tiny holes assembled in a circular formation on the wall he was facing, as well as the wall from which he had emerged from. The absence of a door puzzled him, but before he could even begin to ponder about where he had materialised from, a sudden realisation hit him: the six other guardians were nowhere to be seen.

"Gokudera-kun! Yamamoto! Lambo!"

Momentarily thrown into a state of panic, Tsuna pounded on the walls, yelling out each of the guardians' names.

"Shut up, herbivore, or I'll bite you to death."

Tsuna spun around at the sound of a familiar voice, only to find himself staring at the holes in the wall. As he tried to peer into the holes, another voice called out to him from the back.

"Sawada! Where are you to the extreme!"

"Big brother!"

A wave of relief swept over Tsuna as he heard the over-enthusiastic voice of his sun guardian and the monotonous death threat from the cloud guardian. At least he knew for sure that two of his guardians were safe. But where were the other five?

"_This is your second game location, guardians," _came a slightly muffled voice from the holes from which he had heard Hibari and Ryohei's voices mere seconds ago. _"You must each be wondering where your fellow guardians are. Allow me to explain~"_

Just as Byakuran finished his statement, black lines started appearing on the walls without the speaker holes. The lines slowly connected with one another, taking shape into the form of seven boxes, each stacked one above the other.

"_See these boxes over here? Each guardian is placed in one of these boxes, the Thunder guardian in the first box, and the Mist guardian in the last. The game is very simple. Are you guardians familiar with the game, 'Pass the Message'?"_

"HIIIIIII! Pass the Message?" squeaked Tsuna; his reaction had essentially answered Byakuran's question. "That game is impossible to win!"

"_Nothing is impossible, let alone a game such as this. It is, in fact, an extremely simple game. All you have to do is to ensure that you articulate the message in the most accurate way possible. Surely you guardians have been with one another long enough to communicate a simple message to one another, no?"_

"This is bad," thought Tsuna aloud, biting on his nails in anxiety. "There's no way we'll be able to get all the messages right—"

"_Ah, but you don't have to get __**all**__ the messages right. All you have to do is to get __**one**__ message passed down accurately, Vongola~"_

Tsuna had doubts that the message would even get past Lambo without getting severely distorted beyond comprehension, let alone past the other five guardians including himself. Of course, his neighbour in cubicle was not quite as cynical as he was.

"One? That sounds easy! Let's do this TO THE EXTREME!" Tsuna admired Ryohei for his optimism and his unjustified faith in the rascal of a cow-print suit-wearing five-year old. Wondering how they were going to overcome the only-too-predictable obstacles they were going to face throughout the course of the game, Tsuna drew a mental mind-map as extensive as his exasperated brain would allow him to, only to lose his train of thought as a voice boomed through the speaker holes.

"_My sentiments exactly! We shall delay no longer… Let the game begin!"_

The announcement of the commencement of the game had been so abrupt that Tsuna's brain had only barely registered the implication of the announcement.

"Wait! You can't just—"

Tsuna's objection was cut off mid way by the sound of shutters being slammed tight. The holes in the wall had disappeared entirely; it was as though the holes had never existed in the first place.

"Where did the… What… How…"

"_This is a precautionary measure I am taking to ensure that no guardian is eavesdropping from several cubicles down the line. That would rob the game of its entertainment value, wouldn't you agree, Vongola?~"_

Despite the absence of speakers in the cubicle, Byakuran's words somehow managed to resonate throughout Tsuna's cubicle. The feigned innocence with which he spoke such sadistic words, to say the least, irritated Tsuna.

"Byakuran… you…"

"_And now, for the first phrase," _announced Byakuran, blatantly ignoring Tsuna's menacing words. _"It will be made known to the guardian of Lightning. Remember, all you have to do is to get one phrase right and you all move on to the next stage. You have five attempts. All the best~"_

The shutters of the first cubicle opened and the message was announced to Lambo.

_[Anemones are the most beautiful in winter.]_

Sitting in a slouch at a corner of the cubicle, the rascal of a cow-print suit-wearing five-year old lazily repeated what he heard while picking his nose.

"A lemon's knees are most pee-yew tee full in wind turns?"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" came a voice from the cubicle next to Lambo's upon hearing the sentence that far from made logical sense.

"I don't know, Stupid-dera, that's what Lambo-san heard…" Gokudera let out a scowl. The nonchalant tone of Lambo's reply annoyed the teen, but not being able to do anything about it annoyed him even more. He felt as though the wall that separated him from his would-be victim was mocking him; the temptation to blow up the white separation along with a bit of cow was near intolerable.

"Listen, stupid cow, you'd better tell me what the message is or I swear I'll shove these bombs up your—"

_Clack._

Where Gokudera intended to bury his bombs in was left a mystery as the shutters separating the lightning and storm guardian clicked shut, allowing the next set of shutters to fly open.

"What the hell?" swore Gokudera, slamming his fists against the wall in front of him. "I didn't even get the message yet!"

A cheerful laughter revealed to Gokudera the identity of the guardian he was supposed to pass the ridiculously nonsensical message to.

"What are you laughing about, baseball idiot—" began the irritated teen when the shutters slapped shut. Even with the supposedly soundproof shutters separating the two cubicles, Yamamoto could make out an incoherent muffle of a swear word. Wondering if that was part of the message, Yamamoto proudly recited Gokudera's sentence word for word into the next set of speaker holes and even managed to mimic the little strangled swear word at the end.

"The message is 'what are you laughing about, baseball idiot, far ark', TO THE EXTREME!" Ryohei repeated after Yamamoto to Tsuna, who had been nervously awaiting his turn.

"Huh? Are you sure that's the message?" questioned Tsuna as the message was passed to him. He could have sworn the message sounded more like Gokudera swearing at Yamamoto, but he thought better than to alter the message in the _extremely_ rare event that it was the correct message. "Um… alright… Hibari-san, the message is 'what are you laughing about… baseball… um… idiot… far—"

Tsuna felt stupid for even having to recite such a message. Forcing himself to cough out the word 'ark', he completed the message for the prefect in the cubicle next to his. He wondered why he even bothered to pass the message on knowing it was not going to make it to the last cubicle with Hibari being the intercessor. As the shutters clicked shut, Tsuna silently hoped that Chrome would receivea message; he didn't quite care what the message was, any message would do.

After what felt like ages, a machine-generated announcement that the first round had come to an end followed by a recital of the initial and final messages resonated throughout all seven cubicles. As he heard the final message, Tsuna's heart sank.

_Shut up, herbivore, or I'll bite you to death._

That was the final message.

Hibari must have tried to threaten him while Chrome was listening, leaving her to believe that the threat was the message. The game was proving to be far more impossible to complete than he had imagined.

As the rounds continued, he was more convinced of the fact that the victory of the second round was not theirs to claim.

Tsuna found himself stuck in the cubicle next to Lambo's in the second round, Hibari's in the third round, Gokudera's in the fourth, and Chrome's in the fifth. Tsuna noticed that the only similarities between the initial and final messages were… nothing.

_Gyahaha, Lambo wants some octopus balls!_

That had been the message he had been passed in the second round by the annoying baby cow.

_Do you noisy herbivores want me to bite you to death?_

The ever so familiar statement indicated to Tsuna that the third message had been altered beyond all recognition to the initial message by a certain prefect.

_Tenth, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm so—_

Gokudera's incessant apology implied that the fourth message had gone missing somewhere upstream.

_Hahaha I'm gonna shove a bomb so far up your ass to the extreme._

Chrome had mechanically recited the message she had been passed, obviously, by Yamamoto, Gokudera and Ryohei.

It was painfully clear what the outcome of the game was even without Byakuran having to announce it out loud; the declaration made by the guardians' archenemy was merely a formality or an attempt at subtle mockery.

"_Guardians, that was a marvellous display of perseverance! I am certain I would have conceded had I experienced such a large number of obstacles as you have," _came the condescending remark from the speakers of each cubicle._ "However, it is most unfortunate that you were unable to fulfil the requirements to pass this round~ Better luck next time~"_

With that, the white walls separating the guardians vanished, and the guardians found themselves facing each other for the first time since they were transported into the second game location. Before any of the Vongola could register their surroundings, a piercing scream echoed throughout the room.

All the guardians turned to face the centre of the room.

"_Presenting… my prize."_

The guardians stared at the motionless silhouette in the centre of the room.

"Chrome…"


End file.
